Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
FT’s electoral college sweepstake
Spanish translation:
la porra del FT sobre el número de votos electorales
Added to glossary by
Charles Davis
Nov 10, 2012 20:30
11 yrs ago
1 viewer *
English term
Spain
High quality translations
Native in: Spanish
Works in: English to Spanish, Spanish to English
FT’s electoral college sweepstake
English to Spanish
Tech/Engineering
Mathematics & Statistics
Sondeos electorales
It's about a model correctly predicting the winner in the US elections.
FT, stands for Financial Times (where the article appears). In this context:
"We all get things wrong. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake. But an industry of “strategists” is now under threat. This is a good thing. Political analysis is often more like sports coverage than news."
As I cannot make head or tails of the term, I add below the previous paragraph to the term:
"While Mr Silver was running his model for the last time before the vote, Peggy Noonan, a prominent columnist and former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, did what pundits of that generation do: sensed a mood, saying: “I think it’s this: a Romney win.” She also asked: “Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote?” Well, Mr Silver did. At least Ms Noonan did not translate her “vibrations” into numbers. Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton and now conservative pundit, predicted Mr Romney would get 325 electoral college votes, an outcome with about a 1 per cent probability, according to Mr Silver’s model."
This is followed, as I said, by our context:
"We all get things wrong. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake. But an industry of “strategists” is now under threat. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake."
By the way, when in the previous paragraph you read "1 per cent probability" I take it as a terminology error, I think they mean, according to the context "1 per cent error margin".
FT, stands for Financial Times (where the article appears). In this context:
"We all get things wrong. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake. But an industry of “strategists” is now under threat. This is a good thing. Political analysis is often more like sports coverage than news."
As I cannot make head or tails of the term, I add below the previous paragraph to the term:
"While Mr Silver was running his model for the last time before the vote, Peggy Noonan, a prominent columnist and former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, did what pundits of that generation do: sensed a mood, saying: “I think it’s this: a Romney win.” She also asked: “Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote?” Well, Mr Silver did. At least Ms Noonan did not translate her “vibrations” into numbers. Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton and now conservative pundit, predicted Mr Romney would get 325 electoral college votes, an outcome with about a 1 per cent probability, according to Mr Silver’s model."
This is followed, as I said, by our context:
"We all get things wrong. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake. But an industry of “strategists” is now under threat. I lost the FT’s electoral college sweepstake."
By the way, when in the previous paragraph you read "1 per cent probability" I take it as a terminology error, I think they mean, according to the context "1 per cent error margin".
Change log
Nov 15, 2012 10:42: Charles Davis Created KOG entry
Proposed translations
16 hrs
Selected
la porra del FT sobre el número de votos electorales
I hope you'll excuse me if I explain this in English, Eugenio.
No problem with "FT", unless you think it would be better to spell it out as "Financial Times", but I think "FT" would probably work in Spanish (particularly if the context makes it clear).
"Sweepstake" (I gather that the original form is "sweepstakes" and that the UK form "sweepstake" is probably a back-formation), can be a kind of raffle or lottery, but here it's essentially a kind of bet. The basic idea is that the a group of people buy a ticket or place a bet, and the winner takes the whole pot. It's often organised in workplaces, as here, and is traditionally concerned with horse races, but can also be on other sporting events or (as here) something like an election result.
In the lottery or raffle kind, everyone pays a sum to enter the competition (say 10 pounds) and draws the name of a horse by lot; the person who drew the name of the horse that turns out to win the race takes all the money.
In the betting kind, all the entrants predict the result and the person who gets it right, or gets closest, takes the money. This is the second kind.
Spanish has a word for this: a "porra". I don't know if it's just peninsular Spanish, but I presume that's what you want anyway:
"porra
5. f. coloq. Juego en que varias personas apuestan dinero a un resultado, número, etc., de modo que quien acierta se lleva todo el dinero apostado."
http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=porra
As for "electoral college", this is obviously to do with the US presidential election, and the sweepstake is on the number of electoral college votes for Obama and/or Romney. In the US system each state provides a certain number of electors for the electoral college, chosen according to the popular vote in that state, and the electors then elect the president. For anyone unfamiliar with the system, here's Wikipedia in Spanish and English:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colegio_Electoral_de_los_Estado...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State...
So I think you could say "sobre el número de votos electorales", which is what they're actually trying to predict, or perhaps just "sobre el voto electoral", or even "sobre el colegio electoral", though I would be inclined to clarify it.
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Note added at 1 day23 hrs (2012-11-12 20:15:36 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
"Sweepstakes" has a different meaning in the United States, as explained in the Wikipedia article, but this article has a section on sweepstakes in the UK and Ireland, which refers to the first kind of office sweepstake described above:
"There is a tradition of office sweepstakes (known as office pools in the U.S.), which usually take place over large sporting events such as the Grand National and the World Cup. Entrants pay an equal stake for each horse/team they draw out of the hat before the event. The winner then takes the pot. For horse racing events, the pot may be split among the horses which come first, second and third."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweepstakes#Sweepstakes_in_the_...
However, although that might this text refers to (in theory, you could have tickets with different numbers of electoral votes written on them and have participants draw a ticket from a hat), I think it's very unlikely. It's almost certainly like this example, from New Zealand:
"In 2011 the day before the election I was drinking in Wellington with Mark Unsworth and various associates of Saunders Unsworth. Again there was an results sweepstake, and I am pleased to say again I won it. My predictions for seats for the four main parties was:
National 60 (got 60)
Labour 35 (got 34)
Greens 13 (got 13)
NZ First 7 (got 8 )"
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/tag/dpf/page/4
This person won, because although his predictions were not exactly right, they were closer than those of any other participant. The FT sweepstake would have been like that.
No problem with "FT", unless you think it would be better to spell it out as "Financial Times", but I think "FT" would probably work in Spanish (particularly if the context makes it clear).
"Sweepstake" (I gather that the original form is "sweepstakes" and that the UK form "sweepstake" is probably a back-formation), can be a kind of raffle or lottery, but here it's essentially a kind of bet. The basic idea is that the a group of people buy a ticket or place a bet, and the winner takes the whole pot. It's often organised in workplaces, as here, and is traditionally concerned with horse races, but can also be on other sporting events or (as here) something like an election result.
In the lottery or raffle kind, everyone pays a sum to enter the competition (say 10 pounds) and draws the name of a horse by lot; the person who drew the name of the horse that turns out to win the race takes all the money.
In the betting kind, all the entrants predict the result and the person who gets it right, or gets closest, takes the money. This is the second kind.
Spanish has a word for this: a "porra". I don't know if it's just peninsular Spanish, but I presume that's what you want anyway:
"porra
5. f. coloq. Juego en que varias personas apuestan dinero a un resultado, número, etc., de modo que quien acierta se lleva todo el dinero apostado."
http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=porra
As for "electoral college", this is obviously to do with the US presidential election, and the sweepstake is on the number of electoral college votes for Obama and/or Romney. In the US system each state provides a certain number of electors for the electoral college, chosen according to the popular vote in that state, and the electors then elect the president. For anyone unfamiliar with the system, here's Wikipedia in Spanish and English:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colegio_Electoral_de_los_Estado...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State...
So I think you could say "sobre el número de votos electorales", which is what they're actually trying to predict, or perhaps just "sobre el voto electoral", or even "sobre el colegio electoral", though I would be inclined to clarify it.
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 day23 hrs (2012-11-12 20:15:36 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
"Sweepstakes" has a different meaning in the United States, as explained in the Wikipedia article, but this article has a section on sweepstakes in the UK and Ireland, which refers to the first kind of office sweepstake described above:
"There is a tradition of office sweepstakes (known as office pools in the U.S.), which usually take place over large sporting events such as the Grand National and the World Cup. Entrants pay an equal stake for each horse/team they draw out of the hat before the event. The winner then takes the pot. For horse racing events, the pot may be split among the horses which come first, second and third."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweepstakes#Sweepstakes_in_the_...
However, although that might this text refers to (in theory, you could have tickets with different numbers of electoral votes written on them and have participants draw a ticket from a hat), I think it's very unlikely. It's almost certainly like this example, from New Zealand:
"In 2011 the day before the election I was drinking in Wellington with Mark Unsworth and various associates of Saunders Unsworth. Again there was an results sweepstake, and I am pleased to say again I won it. My predictions for seats for the four main parties was:
National 60 (got 60)
Labour 35 (got 34)
Greens 13 (got 13)
NZ First 7 (got 8 )"
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/tag/dpf/page/4
This person won, because although his predictions were not exactly right, they were closer than those of any other participant. The FT sweepstake would have been like that.
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Thank you very much for your detailed explanatory answer!"
10 hrs
Antonio Tomás Lessa do Amaral
Works in field
Portuguese translations
Native in: Portuguese (Variants: Angolan, South African, European/Portugal, Cape Verdean, Brazilian, Mozambican) 
Works in: English to Portuguese, Italian to Portuguese, Portuguese to English, and 4 more.
no he ganado el premio (la lotería) del FT acerca del resultado del colegio electoral del FT
no he adivinado el resultado del colegio electoral en las elecciones de los Estados Unidos, entonces, no he ganado el premio
Diria así
http://www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/marketing/48575...
Diria así
http://www.proz.com/kudoz/spanish_to_english/marketing/48575...
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